


Το ὄνειρο ἑνός ξυπνητού

by Violsva



Series: Arte Regendus [6]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Distracting Yourself With Work, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Misery, More angst, Moriarty - Freeform, Pretentious Classical References, Recreational Drug Use, Slash, The Stockbroker’s Clerk, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:12:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/958739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes finds a series of distractions, some more successful than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Το ὄνειρο ἑνός ξυπνητού

I lived for months after Watson’s departure in a sort of disbelieving hope, expecting any minute his foot on the stairs while simultaneously certain I should never see him again. The Greeks believed hope was not a blessing but a curse, leaving one in unfulfilled expectation forever. All hope was a fool’s hope, to Aristotle. I was coming around to the view.

I had thought myself finished with the emotion for good after the Sholto case, when Watson had been so close to me, spending so much time back at Baker Street, sleeping on the sofa as I played for him, and every second of it falling in love with someone else.

He had been very tactful about it. He had said nothing aloud. It had therefore only been painfully obvious rather than unbearably so.

And still the hope was there, though Watson had married, and settled with his wife – a treasure, as he had called her, a comfort and protection. Someone to whom people in trouble flocked like birds to a lighthouse.

My sarcasm was natural, but not a sign of dislike. It would have been far easier had I disliked the woman. Easier for me, that is.

But I did not. She was extremely charming personally, and had an admirable if untrained mind – rather a better one than Watson’s, to be honest. If a man she might have been quite useful in our – my – work. But we hadn’t needed a third, and still did not.

It might be more comfortable to never see the man again, if this was the result of his presence. And yet still I found myself on his doorstep in July, asking if he minded coming to Birmingham with me at once. And he still came, very readily and without question, as if it was perfectly natural for me to ask, and him to follow.

I can’t say why I ask him on some cases and not others. I like to think it is primarily a matter of the interest and oddity of the events. But it is also true that it had been a month since I had last seen him, at the time of the murder of Charles McCarthy.

I had not sought him out, and had been thankful that he had let me be. I did not wish to hear any justifications for his silence to his wife. I could have recited them all myself. It was perfectly logical. It was also, for a time, intolerable.

However, a month without so much as a telegram was enough to draw me back to his home, provided that I had a case of sufficient interest to prevent even the beginnings of emotional conversation. I pulled Watson to the four-wheeler and Mr Pycroft’s presence as quickly as possible, and ignored the warmth produced by the line of his leg next to mine.

The case was not so much of a distraction as I had thought. Immediately upon our arrival the man we were after attempted suicide, and, though that hour required quick action and thought, it was all settled quite quickly, and the three of us were on a train back to London before even late afternoon. I had at least managed to keep from any chance for private conversation, though Watson seemed as anxious to avoid it as I.

What it meant, though, was that I spent a good quarter-hour sharing a room with John Watson and the pathetic figure of Beddington, silent and hunched in the corner. A guard had likely been unnecessary; the man was too shocked at the fact of his brother’s act of murder and future hanging to truly take in what was going on around him. Or it might have been the effects of his own attempt at ligature.

It was a sort of loyalty that I found instantly recognizable, and extremely painful in the recollection. I was perhaps more silent than usual on our return journey, but the others were as well, and it was not noticed. Watson was at least satisfied by his medical success, but he remained quiet in deference to Mr Hall Pycroft, who had realized that his future employment prospects were decidedly compromised.

Upon our arrival in London, Watson suggested he and I share a cab, but I directed it to his address and remained out of it, rather to his surprise.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “I expect I’ll see you shortly.” I took the next.

Yet once in Baker Street I realized that my rooms did not in fact hold what I wanted. I had quite a large supply of cocaine, of course, but I wished for the reverse. The craving was entirely mental, rather than biological, but not significantly weaker than those that I remembered from nearly a decade before.

It would be kinder than hanging, at the very least.

“No,” I told myself, going into 221 instead of to the chemist’s.

The cocaine was not ideal, but it worked its purpose. I used rather an excessive quantity over a long period of time, taking more when the effects began to dissipate. I applied myself to various matters, using the energy and refusing to think about anything but the immediate tasks. I did not let myself relax into it, as I generally might. I was too unnerved by the former direction of my thoughts to want any further calm for them to sprout in.

At the end of the second day I stopped, not wishing to go out and knowing that Watson’s dire predictions of the medical consequences might soon become relevant. However, the effects continued after that, though unfortunately without the euphoria.

At last I stopped my pacing and pointless activity and forced myself to my bed. The minutes, each sharp and clear in itself, blurred together in the darkness until they seemed like dim, fogged-over hours, full of the throbbing, terribly rapid beat of my heart.

I did not sleep that night, but I forced myself to lie still through it. The next day I could not move, and did not wish to. Eventually sleep overwhelmed me, thankfully dreamless and continuing.

I believe I woke late that evening, or perhaps it was the next, but I remained where I was, my disgust at the world having extended to include myself. Eventually I slept further.

I did rise later, and eat, and manage some attempt at returning to my usual self externally. I tended to my correspondence and other matters that could not be left longer. Then I lay on the settee, exhausted.

But I had slept so much in the past days that I had no interest in more. I forced myself to rise and went to my chemistry table.

I had left it in terrible condition, potentially dangerous had I been doing something more interesting than examining the composition of certain stains. Watson had always objected to my tendencies towards clutter.

I rang for hot water and other necessities and cleaned the whole area myself. Then I began mapping out possible experiments and investigations, based largely on what I had on hand. In the evening Mrs. Hudson came up with dinner, and to my surprise I devoured it. She had scolded me that morning, and still she was tight-lipped and annoyed. But the disappearance of my dinner helped her mood greatly.

I made some sort of a start on an investigation into the reactions of various chemicals in different environments. The number of jars multiplied – there were nearly infinite possibilities, so I need not wait for developments in any individual sample.

That work took me through the night and the next day with only rare occasions of melancholy. I ate something else, at Mrs. Hudson’s insistence. I recorded the data available. The glass blurred before my eyes.

At last I retired early, and watched the walls of my room darken from grey to black.

I was with John, creeping through a dark mansion. It was old, neglected, perhaps abandoned, but even so we had to hide as we moved through it. Every so often a stream of light would catch a dust-covered table, a faded velvet curtain, a broken chair. I led him up the oddly silent staircase, our feet leaving clear prints in the thick carpet of dust. At the top of the stairs was a door, which did not squeak as I opened it.

Behind the door was a bedroom, the walls whitewashed but clean, the floor swept, the bed made and the sheets turned back invitingly. Then we were on the bed, John naked in my arms, kisses faster and faster and very warm. His hands were tight on my shoulders, his body hot against mine. Our hips pressed together, rubbed, thrust. My hand – his hand -

I couldn’t tell which, or what it did. His mouth was alternately soft and hard on my neck. Everything mixed together into only sensation and heat, and John looked into my eyes and whispered, “Mary.”

I have woken up in far worse ways, of course. But it was the last straw. I threw on my dressing gown, went to my chemicals table, and spent the rest of the night doing various extremely delicate tasks.

I ate Mrs. Hudson’s breakfast that morning and complimented her on it. It was a Saturday – I had lost nearly a week to the cocaine and reaction – and I had no appointments, but luckily the bell rang, and I found myself reassuring a young man over his prospects and pulling from him details indicating rather heinous corruption at his office.

There was enough to do for that case that I barely noticed the normal tedium of Sundays, when London generally refused to provide me with much occupation, and I summed it up on Monday.

It required a certain amount of activity. I had alerted the police, and Lestrade and I went together to investigate the offices, my revolver in my pocket though it was unlikely to be needed. I found myself glancing backwards far more often than was warranted by the few noises of the building settling, often enough that even Lestrade clearly noticed.

But we found the General Manager just where I had expected him, and after that matters were concluded quickly. He was quite docile after an introduction to our revolvers, and though I was rather worried about the paths of exit we could not cover he did not seem to notice them. Lestrade took him off to Scotland Yard and I returned home.

It was very late, but the servant had laid and lit the fire while I was out. I added another log and sank into a chair with relief. My mind focused on the flames and turned to a consideration of chemical reactions.

The Greeks – Heraclitus, I thought, but it was hardly important – had thought fire was an element, a substance in itself. But it was nothing more than a reaction of oxygen and carbon, or other substances.

What else that we thought of as truly existing was merely a combination of chemicals? What else that we thought nonexistent – as we had once believed oxygen or the other gases in the air to be – was also truly a chemical reaction?

There was nothing in a human body that could not be measured and counted by a patient analyst. Could all thoughts, emotions, states of mind therefore be explained as reactions between chemicals yet unknown? Was murder, or embezzlement, merely the result of imbalanced chemicals? If so, what blame could be placed on the perpetrator?

I have never had much faith in determinism, and my natural humanism refused to believe in a chemical Fate just as it had rejected a divine one. Not that I denied the concept entirely; merely the most common manifestations of it. Even if there was a higher Power, that did not destroy the abilities of common men; even if all behaviour was chemical reactions that did not mean there was no central personality to choose between them. Mr Staves, the General Manager, had certainly had logical reason enough to act as he did, if one removed morality as a motive force.

So much for justice, and the centre of my life. But what of other matters? Love, and passion – certainly the drive for reproduction had a biological, and therefore likely chemical, basis, but what of the rest?

It would be easy to dismiss passions I did not share as mere chemical illusions, but also specious. Surely my own interests in that direction shared a common origin with the more conventional versions, though I refused to think of them as perverted or disordered.

I could not even say that the energy spent on them was displaced, for when I had had -

Decidedly not to the purpose, and useless besides. Furthermore, surely others before me, with nothing better to spend their brains on, had exhausted the question of why a noble spirit should be found in an animal body, and with no clear result. Were I to attempt it I would be fighting my way over ground long since explored, and neglecting my chosen work in the meantime.

There were far more important matters for me, anyway. The case’s conclusion was not entirely unexpected, but it was very suggestive. Following so close on the heels of a similar one, it had reminded me of a project that I had been neglecting. I returned to it, and it turned out my suspicions had good reason.

There had been too many coincidences in my work for some time. Too many connections, too many names showing up again and again, always without enough evidence of wrongdoing to satisfy a court. I was in the process of mapping these connections out, and had been for more than a year.

In such circumstances as I had been in eighteen months before, every man looks for a distraction. For Watson it had been writing, for me it was this. But my mental state in the intervening time had not always been conducive to such work.

Now I set myself to it with determination. Too many recent crimes – many of them matters that had never come to me – had fit the same pattern. I had been letting personal matters distract me for too long.

As each point was placed in my mind, as the surface of the table became invisible under the layers of papers, pictures began to form. Most often it was an individual man, his name or description matching across a series of cases over time. This was common enough; it was how I had caught John Clay, after all. But the men here were not important – that was obvious by the disparity of the cases they were peripherally involved in. They were not the motivating force. A rein cannot pull itself – there must be a driver.

Below the relatively clear lines of these tools there was a deeper pattern. Here were the connections of information, the leaks at high points that led to multiple crimes further along. The individuals responsible at this level were harder to determine, and politically shielded. And there was more, beneath.

This was not the work of one evening. I kept at it for some days, disdaining sleep and eating only when Mrs. Hudson stubbornly brought food in defiance of my silence. On the third day she brought chastisement as well.

“If you don’t sleep soon, Mr Holmes, I’ll send for the doctor,” she said.

“My dear woman,” I said, overcompensating for my irritation, “he won’t thank you for it, and neither will I. What good would it do?”

“Bed, Mr Holmes,” she said. “There are times when I think it would be easier to rent to you if I had ever had children. I’d know how to manage you then. I’m not having you fainting in your sitting room and forcing me to call Dr. Watson.”

“No one would force you,” I said, but I did rise from my desk. The slight dizziness was no doubt a reaction to leaving my work unfinished.

It was wonderful to have a matter of such interest in front of me. Normally only cases and ennui would cause me to forgo food and sleep. This was a case, but a purely mental one, and one larger than I had ever before seen.

I slept for twelve hours straight and returned at once to my papers. Charts of the connections were already mapped in my head, but I drew them up on paper for each individual I could identify. It would assist the police. Then I returned to the patterns.

Beneath the leaks and corruption, beneath the channels of information flowing to the criminal actors, was a deeper level still. Someone was organizing every single disparate network, without, so far as I could tell, ever appearing himself. Someone was making these connections between individuals who would otherwise never have known each other, introducing thieves and thugs to corrupt bankers and bureaucrats.

He must have a vast network, not only to organize this but to find the men he was organizing in the first place. His spies must be gathering information at all levels of society. It was horrifically admirable.

“Have you found what you’re looking for, at least, Mr Holmes?” asked Mrs. Hudson, bringing tea and an unasked-for sandwich.

“Oh yes. I’ll finish this yet.”

“Not if you don’t eat you won’t.”

“You and I, Mrs. Hudson,” I said, “could bring down a criminal empire. On my own I suppose I’d faint in the middle of it, and embarrass myself. Let us set to it, then.”

But I had only the faintest traces of his presence, nowhere near enough to identify him by. I poured over the evidence for a week, making sure I had extracted everything I possibly could. Then I made up a new notebook for the case and began to plan. It was time to confirm my theories.

It took two months to fully realize the scale of the matter. The network was vast and almost unbelievable in scope. I had been able to gather enough evidence to have five of the lesser agents arrested, and every single one of them had suddenly found the funds for a competent or stellar defence. One of them had, despite my care, been tried by a judge I had suspected of connections to the system, due to a schedule change at the last minute. All the enquiries I had made about those I suspected of being informants or corrupted by the conspiracy had reached dead ends far too quickly. I would correct that, of course, but I was unnerved.

I was beginning to suspect that the task I had set for myself was the greatest I would ever accomplish, enough to set a man’s name in stone for centuries. Assuming I accomplished it, that is. It might easily prove to be the undoing of anyone who tried, and I was not immune. Yet I had, I thought, a better chance than anyone, and no man with any sense of justice could refuse such a call. Certainly my own person could not be said to be of more worth than the elimination of such a threat to society.

If it was my undoing, at least it would be a worthy one. But I wouldn’t go without pulling the system down with me.

Watson would not need to know the details.


End file.
